robglazebrook.com

Question: Eric had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he’d like this blog to have the same structure as my front page. I’m inclined to agree, and after looking at my code, I think it’ll be an annoying, but workable, transfer. Does anyone else agree and/or disagree? Preferably not ‘and’?
—–

Megan surprised me Sunday night by being home. She text messaged me ealier in the evening, asking if I wanted to stop by her new place on my way home, since I was at my parent’s place, and Ankeny rests ‘twixt Des Moines and Ames (really, it sits on Des Moines’ face, but we won’t get into that). On my way home, I called her to tell her I wouldn’t be stopping by, since it was late and I needed to get to bed. She was understanding. Probably because she was already at our apartment. She knows me too well, I guess. *g*

All this means is last night was the first night I’ve had to spend ‘alone’. The apartment was quieter than I would have liked all night, but I slept better than I thought I would. Maybe I was just really tired. Maybe it was something else. Because, you know, it really has to be one of those two. Anyways, Megan will be staying at our apartment again tonight, since she has to work early in the morn and hasn’t transferred to Ankeny / found a job in Ankeny as yet. We have the apartment until the 30th, so I guess we can use it until then, but I’ve already warned her my bed’s leaving on the 17th. We have an air mattress, if need demands such measures.

I just realized last night how busy this week is going to be. Today I work until 2pm, go to class until 4pm, head home for a breather and then spend 5pm - 10:30pm working at Coach House (and trying to prepare for a Bio test on Friday). Wednesday, I work and have class until 2pm, then I head home to start packing for my move this weekend and doing homework until around 9pm, when I’ll head to Welch Ave Station for a few beverages with a few friends (social obligations, you know). Thursday looks a lot like Tuesday, except I’ll have Bio reading ~and~ a paper to write. Friday, I do the work/class thing until 2pm, then head home and pack my little heart out until I can’t stand it no more or I run out of things to pack. I want to go out Friday night, since it’s VEISHEA and all, but I don’t know if I’ll have the chance. I have much packing to do, and less time to do it in. Saturday, I move, with the help of dad and Sandy’s guy, Ryan. Sunday, I set up house, or something. I haven’t decided how much I’m going to unpack, considering I’ll be moving from the first floor to the second in a matter of weeks.

I also need to remember to:
1) Change my address with the USPS, ISU, and GBB.
2) Call the City of Ames and tell them to turn off the electricity on the 30th.
3) Call Mediacom and tell them to turn off the Internet (well, my corner of the Internet. Not the whole thing. I better be explicit on that one) sometime before the 30th.
4) Take my Bio test, write my Argument paper, do my Bio homework, read my Classical Studies books, read a chapter or two of Sociology, and ~breathe~.
5) Oh, and I need to get a website done before May. Yay.

Sighs ensue. Does anyone wanna volunteer to be my personal assistant this week?

Megan’s moving out today. It hasn’t felt real until now; although I’m sure I’ve yet to feel the full weight of reality. She was still in bed when I left for work this morning, and as I bent down to kiss her forehead on my way out the door, I realized that today might very well be the last time I partake in that loving ritual, which has been a part of my life for the last year and a half. Other habits and rituals are likewise thrown in sharp relief, and I’m not sure I like the image they create. For instance, in the last 500 days (give or take), I’ve slept alone twice. Today, those exceptions become the rule. I may have to buy a body pillow in order to fall asleep next week.

I’m going to miss her. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. In some ways, perhaps it’s for the best that I’m so busy right now. I work all weekend. I decide on my first graduate classes next week. I move all next week and move my bed (hopefully) next weekend. And, as the semester winds to a close, my papers and projects will grow in frequency, importance, and scope. I’ll have things to take my mind off the fact that when I sit down to dinner, I sit down alone; that when I laugh at a movie, I have no one to turn to and smile with; that when I come home after a long day of work and classes, no one will greet me at the door with a kiss.

I might just be a touch sentimental about the whole thing. Megan swears she’ll be around, though only time will convince me of that claim. She also insists we’ll have some sort of a relationship (the tenets of which have yet to be determined), though I have my doubts there, as well. She felt we didn’t spend enough time together when we lived together; how will separate addresses remedy this problem? Time will tell, I guess. She says we have a chance; I say I’ve lost hope. This is one of the few times in my life wherein I desperately want to be wrong.

I’m a real chicken when it comes to online auctions. I’ll spend days watching an auction, psyching myself up to bid, and when the price jumps suddenly in the final minutes (as it inevitably does, because there are at least two dozen other people watching in the final minutes), I wuss out and decide not to. I suppose that’s better than the alternative, though: showing no fear in the face of electronic commerce can lead to insurmountable digital debt. :)

Short story long, I still haven’t gotten my grubby little hands on a Lomo. I almost bid on one last night, but in the last 10 minutes of the auction, the price tag went from $26 to $46 and I got cold feet. By the time I convinced myself that $46 for a $200 camera wasn’t bad at all (and considering they go for $70 - $90 regularly on eBay), the auction had ended and I was out of luck. Silly me. Now I have another long stretch of hanging out in the shadows of online auctionhouses, watching Russian cameras sell like American hotcakes during Stuffed French Toast days at IHOP while making cryptic notes in the margins of my notebook and warily eyeing the other bidders, trying not to let on that I’m scoping any item in particular. Or something like that.

Someone’s coming to look at our apartment Thursday, which means Megan and I will be spending all evening Wednesday cleaning and making things pretty. We’re hoping the prospectives actually interested this time (the last people were here all of two minutes), because Megan moves out Friday and I’m hoping to move out a week from then, and we’d both prefer not to pay rent on a place we don’t use. Ironically, the girl saw my ad on an ISU-based electronic message board, not on the pretty fliers I spent far too much time working on. Ah well. The fliers gave me a chance to play with visual design, and I’d missed that.

I think I’m going to try to visit my family in Des Moines for at least a couple of hours Easter evening. I’ll still be on call, but here’s my theory: people, particularly the sort of people that manage gift shops, will probably want to get home to their families on Easter evening. Managers only bug me when they’re in the stores, not when they’re at home with their families. So, perhaps their wants (to get out of the store) and my wants (Easter candy to spend time with my family) aren’t nearly as mutually exclusive as usual. :)

That change I mentioned I was going to make to the front page earlier? Yah. I made it. So, those of you who had an opinion on the previous page design should go and check it out. I guess that would mean Eric. Though the rest of you (that would be what, my mom?) are more than welcome to develop an opinion and share it. If the box isn’t floating to the center, kindly press the refresh button. If something looks dreadfully wrong, kindly let me know. I’ve only tested in IE6 and Firefox. That’s because I’m lazy. :)

I got some unfortunate news yesterday: I’m stuck working the entire Easter weekend. Although most of that time will be spent on-call (as opposed to in the office), it still effectively rules out family dinners. I need to be within walking distance of a computer I can use to connect to Coach House (and their stores), as well as a quiet environment in which to answer the phone. The latter, at least, ain’t happening at our family dinners.

I’m bummed about missing the family get-together. I haven’t seen my family since Christmas, and as most of you have figured out, I’ve had a pretty tough time emotionally since then (since before then, actually, but we won’t get into that). I was looking forward to the opportunity to be surrounded by friendly, sympathetic folk.

Also of an annoyance: I’m scheduled to work the weekend I was planning on moving (23rd - 25th). If need be, I could probably rearrange that one, or possibly even do both simultaneously. If I leave my computer up as long as possible in my apartment, it would be doable. I have a connection to Coach House’s servers from both my apartment and the house I’m moving to. Still, perhaps it’d be easier to move out the weekend before that. As always, that depends more on other people’s schedules than it does my own.

I’m still wanting a lomo. Unfortunately, they’re still going for around $90 apiece on eBay and I’m still dirt poor. For those who were concerned about the photo quality found on the Lomography International website, here’s a few ~good~ lomo photos. Beautiful colors, no? Then again, Heather Champ -is- a photogoddess. But you gotta assume, she’s good in part because she knows what equipment to use.
—

I plan on making a change to the look of my front page today. I’ve figured out a nice way of centering the text box over a textured background and keeping my drop shadow. See, the drop shadow isn’t a ‘real’ drop shadow, so to speak. I used Photoshop to create a shadow over my background, and then just copied it into a new image. I had to do this because Internet Explorer doesn’t support alpha transparency in images (That’s where you can partially see through something, such as a shadow. If you look at a shadow, it isn’t a black area; it’s a darkened area. There’s a difference). If it did, I could just plop down a semi-transparent black image and call it a shadow. I can’t though, which means I need to statically apply the shadow to my background, which means I need to know where my box is going to be in relation to the background, which I can’t do if my text box is in an arbitrarily determined location such as ‘the middle’. At least, I couldn’t. I figured out how to do it. Go me. :)

Have a good day.